


omelette du fromage

by orphan_account



Series: how (not) to adult [2]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Rogue is a French student, Sting is a digital art student, Tutoring, capital B, sting is Broke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sting glances up, already preparing himself to hate the person he’s supposed to be tutoring (if only because he’s stolen all his Friday nights for the foreseeable future), but his anger dies in his throat, along with his greeting, when he catches sight of him.</p><p> </p><p>  <i> Fuck. </i></p><p> </p><p>He’s <i> hot. </i></p><p><i> Really </i> hot.</p><p>Like, Uptown Funk <i> ‘make a dragon wanna retire, man’ </i> kind of hot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	omelette du fromage

Being broke is part of the whole “student experience” and Sting gets that.

He gets that having barely a penny to your name is this weird badge of honour all students wear, and that being able to proudly boast you ate four day old ham paired with two day old bread and _survived_ is pretty much the equivalent of winning a Grammy down at the student bar. 

He gets it.

 _Totally_.

It’s a little weird, and his stomach rarely thanks him for it, but he gets it.

It’s just—

On cue, his stomach growls as he surveys his near-empty shelf in the shared refrigerator in their kitchen. One lone potato sits in the corner and he realises he’s hit a new low. Frowning a little, Sting reaches inside the fridge and grabs the potato, only to drop it with a surprised ‘ _ack_ ’ when his fingers brush against fur.

 _Oh God_. The potato is growing _mould_.

Scratch whatever he was thinking before. _This_  is officially his new low.

He picks up the potato gingerly, careful not to touch any of the fuzz growing on the underside, and surveys it for a few seconds. It doesn’t look _that_ bad. The mould is only growing on one side and he thinks he can probably just slice that off and pretend like it was ne—

“Don’t even _think_ about it.”

“I wasn’t,” Sting lies, purposely avoiding his flatmates stern gaze as he shuffles towards the bin and tosses the potato in. _Goodbye dinner_.

“You were,” Yukino laughs, dropping her bag onto the kitchen table as she slides onto one of the stools.

“I would’ve cut the mould off,” Sting mutters as he throws himself onto the stool next to hers, dropping his head onto the wooden table with a dramatic groan. “Yukino, I’m _starving_.”

“I can see that,” she hums, patting his head sympathetically, “it’s that bad, huh?”

“I was seriously considering eating a rotten potato for dinner,” Sting groans, lifting his head up to face her. “And I’m still considering it.”

“Sting. It’s in the bin.”

“That’s nothing a little water won’t fix.”

Yukino laughs nervously, trailing off as she realises Sting isn’t actually joking. “You can have some of my food,” she says quickly, noticing the way he’s eyeing the bin. “Just please, _please_ , forget about the potato.”

“Thank you Yukino,” he murmurs, lips pulling into a grateful smile, “but I need to think about the long term. I don’t think I’ve had a real meal all semester.”

“Maybe that’s because you spent your student loan on a new MacBook?”

“I needed it,” Sting argues, though, not-so-secretly, he knows she’s at least somewhat right. Every time he opens up his nice, shiny, new MacBook he thinks about all the meals he could’ve purchased with the money instead. 

On some of his more trying nights, where he goes to sleep with nothing but a glass of tap water and a dream, he’s been tempted to sell the MacBook (he knows Natsu down the hall is looking for a new computer), but he _does_ need it for his course. His old laptop just wasn’t cutting it anymore and, at the time, he figured if he was going to buy a new one he might as well buy a good one.

“Why don’t you get a job?”

Sting rolls his eyes. “You don’t think I’m trying, _mother_?”

“Hey!” Yukino shoves him gently, rolling her eyes when Sting pretends to dramatically fall off the stool, “I’m not your mother just because I’m responsible.”

“I’m responsible.”

Yukino quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay. I’m _somewhat_ responsible.”

She raises both eyebrows.

“...I have my moments.”

“I’ll accept that,” she nods, though she’s still waiting for these alleged ‘moments’ to make an appearance. “And about the job search, I know they’re looking for tutors for some of the first years down at the student union. I think they pay pretty decently as well.”

Sting wrinkles his nose. The last thing he wants to do is spend his precious, and scarce, free time tutoring. College students are the worst — and he should know, he’s one of them.

His stomach rumbles loudly in defiance.

Then again, he is _genuinely_ considering rescuing a semi-rotten potato from the bin and it _would_ be nice to be able to stop mooching off his flatmates all the time.

“Fine,” he grumbles reluctantly, “sign me up.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s half nine on a Friday night and he’s been invited to no less than _three_ parties (all of them house parties so he doesn’t even have to worry about entry fees or paying for drinks) so the last place he wants to be is in the library.

Yet here he is, in the library with a stack of textbooks piled up by his side.

He already hates the kid he’s supposed to be tutoring. Who — _who_ — in their right mind schedules a study session at half nine on a Friday night?

“Sting Eucliffe?”

Sting glances up, already preparing himself to hate the person he’s supposed to be tutoring (if only because he’s stolen all his Friday nights for the foreseeable future), but his anger dies in his throat, along with his greeting, when he catches sight of him.

_Fuck._

He’s _hot_.

 _Really_ hot.

Like, Uptown Funk ‘ _make a dragon wanna retire, man_ ’ kind of hot.

"You _are_ Sting, right?”

“Huh?” Sting blinks. “Oh. Yeah. That is I. I mean, I am he. I’m Sting. Sting, that’s my name.” Oh _God_ , he’s rambling. He clears his throat and tries again. “Sorry, uh, you’re Rogue, I’m guessing?”

He nods and Sting tries to fight the urge to cheer out loud.

So, his Friday’s for the foreseeable future have been reduced to sitting in the library for any hour or two? So fucking _what_ , if this is going to be his view?

Rogue smiles (and Sting swoons) as he pulls out the seat next to him and drops into it, spreading his textbook, notepad and pen over the table as he goes. “Thanks for agreeing to tutor me. I’ve got exams coming up in a couple of week and, you know,” he shrugs, “I’m a little nervous.”

“Don’t worry. Those exams are a piece of cake,” Sting says earnestly, remembering how nervous he’d been for his exams back in first year, only to be annoyed at how ridiculously easy they were. “You’ll do fine.”

Rogue smiles again. It’s a shy, slow smile, and this time Sting actually has to look away because _wow_ , that is just unfair. You can’t just unleash something like that on a guy with no warning.

“Oh, you tutor art as well?”

“Yeah I—” Sting pauses, frowning a little. “As well?”

Rogue nods, and gestures to the pile of textbooks by his side. “‘Art in Theory’, ‘This Is Modern Art’, ‘Art Since 1960’,” Rogue shrugs, “are you majoring in French and doing an art module on the side?”

“Majoring...in...French?” Sting says slowly, his gaze sweeping over the desk to land on Rogue’s textbooks. Rogue’s French textbooks.

Oh.

_Oh._

“You study French?”

Rogue’s smile falters slightly. “Yes? I thought— I thought that’s why we were paired together? My professor said you passed first year with flying colours?”

 _Well that’s not total a lie_ , Sting thinks. He _did_ pass first year with flying colours. First year Digital Art, not first year French. Belatedly, he realises that he must have ticked the wrong box on his form.

“Is— Is everything alright?” Rogue asks, brows furrowing slightly in the middle.

No, everything is _not_ alright. His knowledge of French doesn’t really go beyond _omelette du fromage_ , and the only reason he knows _that_ is because of stupid Saturday morning cartoons.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Sting begins, “it’s ju—”

“Oh good,” Rogue grins and, once again, Sting finds himself stunned into silence by his smile. “You seem like a good tutor, I was pretty glad when I got you.”

Sting wonders if it’s normal for his heart to be racing this fast.

He needs to tell the truth. Let Rogue know that there was a mix-up and his knowledge of French is minimal and— _Oh_ , he’s smiling again.

Damn that smile.

As surreptitiously as he can, Sting shoves the art textbooks to the floor, blinking innocently up at Rogue when he shoots him a questioning glance.

“So,” he says loudly, shuffling closer towards Rogue so he can reach for his French textbook, “French. The language I am _100 per cent_ fluent in,” he pauses and wiggles his brows a little. The language of love. Tell me what you know.”

 

* * *

 

“Bonjour?”

“No! No! You’re saying it all wrong. It’s _bonjour._ _Bonjour!_ ”

“I’m literally saying that.”

“ _Noo_ ,” Yukino shakes her head, “you’re saying it like ‘ _bon-jaw_ ’. You’re butchering it completely. Where’s the accent? The flair? The passion? The _je ne sais quoi_?”

Sting quirks an eyebrow as he lifts his head up from his textbook to peer over at Yukino. “The what now?”

To her credit, Yukino doesn’t reach for the textbook and chuck it at him - which would be a perfectly understandable option given the situation. Instead, she sighs and shakes her head before leaning over the desk to pat his hands gently. “Sting, sweetie?”

“Uh huh?”

“Just give up.”

Sting scowls, snatching his hand away from her as he tries to refocus his attention on the open book in front of him. He lasts a grand total of five seconds, before the words start to swim in his vision and he realises that it’s a lost cause. “I’m doomed.”

“I could’ve told you that before you spent £70 on a small mountain of ‘French for Beginners’ textbooks.”

“Well why didn’t you?”

“I did,” Yukino scoffs, “if I recall correctly, you told me, and I quote, to ‘ _stop getting in the way of true love_ ’. Ring any bells?”

“None whatsoever.”

He’s lying of course. He remembers word for word the conversation he’d had with Yukino after he returned home from that first study session with Rogue.

(“Yukino, I’m in love.”

“Get off my bed. You smell.”

“Okay, _rude_. Firstly, no I don’t. And secondly. Yukino? Didn’t your hear me? I’m in love.”

“You fall in love every time you walk across campus.”

“This time it’s real though.”

“You say _that_ every time you walk across campus too.”)

Now they’re four study sessions in and Sting is beginning to worry that his method of teaching (having Rogue write down all his problems so he can check them against Google Translate when he’s not looking) isn’t going very well. But he likes Rogue - genuinely likes him - and he’s not ready for their sessions to end.

They get along ridiculously well and it really doesn’t help that Rogue laughs at all his (admittedly) crappy jokes, and not in that polite ‘ha...ha’ way either, but full blown belly laughs, that have him smothering his mouth with the sleeves of his sweatshirt in order to lessen some of the noise and avoid getting ticked off by the librarian.

But, Sting is also painfully aware that Rogue does have exams coming up and he can’t help but feel just a teeny, tiny, bit guilty for monopolising his time when he should be revising.

“You _should_ feel guilty,” Yukino says through a mouthful of yoghurt. She narrows her eyes and wags the spoon in his face. “Poor kid. He probably thinks he’s actually learning something. You have to tell him. Although, it’s a miracle he hasn’t figured it out already with _your_ pronunciation.”

“Or, _or_ ,” Sting says quickly, “I could just keep on practicing.”

“ _Or,_ you could be a good person and do the right thing.”

“I guess that’s an option,” he admits reluctantly, diving back into the textbook in front of him.

An option he really, _really_ , doesn’t want to consider.


End file.
